


And your quaint honour turn to dust

by Anonymous



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, Madeleine Era, identity issues but not really identity-related dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:55:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javert helps M. Madeleine home after the incident with Fauchelevent's cart. Things degenerate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And your quaint honour turn to dust

> Madeleine rose. He was pale, though dripping with perspiration. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed his knees and called him the good God. As for him, he bore upon his countenance an indescribable expression of happy and celestial suffering, and he fixed his tranquil eye on Javert, who was still staring at him.
> 
> Les Miserables, _volume one, book five, chapter six:_ Father Fauchelevent

Have patience, Javert cautioned himself as he tightened his grip on Madeleine’s arm. The display in the town square had thrilled and alarmed him in equal measure, but it was not enough evidence to make an arrest. Instead, he placed a steadying hand on Madeleine’s lower back and did not apologise when the muscles twitched at his touch.

‘Come now, Monsieur,’ he said, as brusquely as he could manage with Madeleine's arm tensing beneath his fingertips. ‘If you refuse to be taken to hospital, allow me to see you safely home.’

Soon, he had no doubt, the man would slip and reveal himself - perhaps within the hour, if Javert had enough cunning. But for now, he was a gentleman with nothing more to his detriment than a suspicious past and a powerful pair of shoulders. No matter. Javert could wait a little longer.

Madeleine was silent as they made their way through winding streets to the upper part of the town, but he allowed Javert to choose their route to his lodgings. And so they went the slower way, stumbling past market stalls and gardens. Occasionally they paused for townspeople to gather around Madeleine and thank him for his service, and Javert shuddered at each press of an innocent palm to Madeleine’s hand or chest or muddied shoulder.

Still, it was a satisfying thing, to be seen with Madeleine in his care. To imagine that soon - very soon, no doubt - he would once again march Madeleine through these streets, and there would be no fawning crowd to slow them down.

‘Your portress has been notified,’ he told Madeleine, who made little more than a grunt in response. Javert tightened his grip on the man’s upper arm, savouring the way the half-shredded shirt pulled further apart at his touch. ‘She is preparing a bath and setting out a fresh set of clothes for you, should you have need of them.’ He paused, turning Madeleine by the shoulders to look him over.

‘Javert-’

The man was transfigured. To Javert, he might have been suspended in air: neither the gentleman nor the convict, but something containing a little of both. His hair, matted with sweat and dirt, had fallen loose around his face. The remains of his shirt was a mess of dark patches where Madeleine had lowered himself into the mud, and the ruined garment clung to the outline of his chest and shoulders, revealing the powerful body that Madeleine had worked so hard to conceal. His lips were pale and the whole of him glistened with cold sweat.

At his throat, his cravat had half come undone. How simple it would be to hook two fingers and pull away that scrap of silk that bound the man to his false self. How satisfying it would-

‘Javert.’ The man - who was not his prisoner, Javert reminded himself, not yet - raised his eyes. His voice carried neither the surety of Monsieur Madeleine nor the defiance of Jean le Cric. ‘Must you do this here?’

 _Patience_ , Javert reminded himself once more. What was a few minutes’ wait when the moment was so sweet? Taking Madeleine’s arm once more, he propelled him forward, faster than they had been walking before. Was that clattering the sound of Madeleine stumbling? Did his bad leg fail him, or was it shock at the change of pace? It hardly mattered. ‘Keep up, then,’ he snapped through gritted teeth. And then, with a deliberate intake of breath, ‘if you please, Monsieur.’

They did not stop again. When people passed them and called out to Madeleine, he nodded his appreciation but Javert drove them on and Madeleine did not protest. Javert kept his hand on Madeleine’s arm, and it occurred to him that this was the longest he had put his hand on another man since leaving the bagne. He wondered if it was the same for-

Not yet. There was no time for those thoughts out here in the open.

Javert pressed on and Madeleine kept pace. He had no doubt that if they had passed a beggar or a small child, Madeleine would have insisted on a longer stop, but thankfully the streets were free of the needy. Either that or, perhaps, Madeleine considered his good deeds complete for the day. Certainly, he had all the accolades any man could want, Javert thought with some bitterness. His mind cast back to Madeleine’s trembling figure, raised up in the town square. Old Fauchelevent had fawned, pitiful, at his feet. The crowd had surged forward to thank him and praise his name. But in the centre of the maelstrom had been Madeleine, and the two of them had known in that instant that he had offered himself to Javert.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps not. Perhaps this was nothing but a fine man of good standing with a strength to rival that of Atlas. There was no saying for certain, not yet. Javert clenched his free hand into a fist as they turned the corner. Madeleine was disconcerted, certainly, as any wretch would be in the hands of the law. But he was in shock, of course. And he had, of course, just performed a deadly feat.

‘Your keys, Monsieur,’ Javert’s voice came out in a clipped growl. He held out his hand.

Madeleine glanced at him, pulling out his keys and unlocking the door himself. At the threshold of his home, he turned in the doorway, one step above Javert, and looked down. Despite the state of his clothing, he seemed to have regained some of his composure. Perhaps the exertion of the walk had set his nerves alight as they had Javert’s. Or perhaps this was simply the last reserves of his resolve.

‘Thank you for helping me home, Inspector. That will be all for today.’

So calm. After the past hour, he was so infuriatingly serene. And, of course, if Monsieur Madeleine was calm then so too must Javert be calm. He unclenched his jaw and drew himself up, so Madeleine’s small height advantage was lost.

‘Nonsense.’

‘Nonsense?’

‘With the best of intentions, Monsieur, yes. Nonsense. You are unwell. You are in my care. You require a bath and a clean shirt.’

‘I have a portress for such things.’

‘And she has been notified,’ Javert heard his voice rising. He clamped down on the words. ‘It is already arranged.’

‘Thank you, Inspector, but I couldn’t possibly trouble you any further.’ And here was Monsieur Madeleine, with his quiet but terrifying authority. To see him play the gentleman, wield the weapon of pristine manners as a means of defiance - it was too much.

Madeleine was already stepping back into the house, closing the door. Seizing his opportunity, Javert stepped forward after him, putting the breadth of his shoulders between the door and its frame. Madeleine’s eyes widened at the sight, and he took another step backwards, dropping his hand, and Javert took the opportunity to shut the door behind him.

‘I think I understand your reluctance,’ he said, watching with interest as Madeleine’s lips flattened into a determined line. His nostrils were flared and his hands were clenching into fists at his sides. _The beast reveals itself when cornered_. He smiled. ‘I’ve made no secret of my history. I’m sure you’ve been informed of my time in Toulon.’

Madeleine exhaled a shuddering breath. It was a sweet, breaking sound.

‘Naturally a gentleman such as yourself could not be expected to know what a spell at the bagne would entail, but rumours about the place will always fly. And outsiders are always so curious about the way prisoners were handled.’ Here Madeleine twitched. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you: A gentleman like you has no reason to fear that sort of treatment.’

How must this man have looked, some twenty-five years ago? Immersed in that tub of reeking water, baptised with the filth of the bagne. Jean Valjean’s record had been silent on the matter, but Javert had witnessed that convict’s re-arrest more than once. He had seen the man dragged to his belly by no less than three armed guards. His face pressed to the dirt, muscles trembling with tension under the weight of each new chain until he was secured, Valjean’s every breath had been heavy with his silent fury. No doubt, the young thief had not been so different. Even now, Javert could see Madeleine’s facade falling away with each shuddering breath.

He took a step closer, hands poised to defend himself if Valjean abandoned his disguise entirely and lashed out, and made his voice into something trembling calm but not quite gentle.

‘Monsieur, you are exhausted, you are filthy and today you did the town a tremendous service. Allow me to repay you what little I can.’

‘You owe me nothing.’ Madeleine’s back was against the wall, his voice strained as though Javert had taken hold of that loose cravat and pulled the knot tight against the hollow of his throat. ‘Let me be. Please.’

He was warm, Javert realised as he stepped closer. He knew that heat better than any other: it radiated from the apprehended pickpocket in the dark corner of the tavern; from the not-so-blind beggar exposed in the market square. It was that first singe of guilty flesh: the heat of the criminal’s fear, pouring off him as the nerves came alight and the instinct to flee was thwarted by the knowledge that it was too late to escape. It was such a heat that consumed the man who stood flattened between Javert and the brick wall, pinned between a forsaken name and a worthless one.

It should not have been so easy to lift his hand and clasp the front of Madeleine’s shirt. It should not have been easy to lay his hand on a gentleman, but he had seen enough people touch Madeleine in the past hour that it was as simple as brushing away a fly. Madeleine’s breath caught in a gasp, and he raised a hand as though to wrench Javert’s grasp loose. But instead the hand wavered in place, not quite touching Javert’s, and then dropped to his side. An admission of guilt? A confirmation of innocence? Javert shifted his gaze to meet Madeleine’s wide eyes.

‘What did you think would happen here- right now?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You must have expected something when you lifted that cart. What were you hoping for?’

A shrug. ‘The man could have died.’

‘He was a worker in your factory? He was related to one of your girls?’

‘Old Fauchelevent? Not at all.’

Infuriating. Javert tightened his grip on the shirt, shoving a little. Madeleine’s shoulders bumped the wall at his back. ‘You waste your own time and mine. The man owed you money, then?’

‘Of course not.’

‘He was your enemy. You wanted his sympathy.’

‘I did not.’

‘He was your friend. You wanted his gratitude.’

‘No.’

‘The townspeople, then. You wanted their gratitude. You knew I was watching you. You knew the risk. You knew the cart was heavy enough to crush the pair of you.’

‘I may have known it, but-’

‘You wanted their respect. You wanted status.’

‘I wanted his _life_.’ Madeleine’s voice rose to a despairing pitch, and the resonance of his tone was enough to drive the air from Javert’s lungs. ‘Please. I have no secret intentions in this. A man was dying and I did what I must because I knew that I could. You would have done the same in my position.’

‘I would, indeed?’

‘I know you would.’ Madeleine reached up once more, and this time, he plucked Javert’s hand from his shirt. Javert watched, transfixed. ‘Thank you for bringing me here; I don’t know how safely I could have walked home alone. For now, though, I can bathe myself well enough and I can find my own shirts. Please let me be.’

Javert stood rigid, horrified to find that a small part of him wished to obey.

‘I think your status in the town will change very soon,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Are you prepared for that?’

Madeleine shook his head slightly. His lips moved without sound or words, but it was not the terrifying silence of Jean Valjean. Javert could see clearly the possibilities that lay before Madeleine - the mayor’s scarf, twice offered and twice rejected already, or the irons of the convict.

It was a dangerous gamble, this. The thought of this so-called Madeleine rising to such a position had crossed his mind once or twice before, but to see it realised - to see the laws of society flung into such disrepair - was unimaginable. He had resigned himself to the belief that Valjean would never risk the exposure, and certainly not beneath his nose. And yet the thought was there now and could not be banished. Could he bear the thought of this man as his superior?

If he were ever to bear it, it would be now. Here, where they stood with nothing between them and the truth but a ragged shirt and a loose cravat. Here, with Madeleine’s layers worn thin enough that Javert could almost see through to the scoundrel beneath. Almost.

‘Let us assume,’ Javert said, with some difficulty, ‘that it goes well for you.’ And he sunk to his knees.

The sound Madeleine made, a low and shuddering exhale, was almost enough to justify the act. Javert trailed a curious hand down the side of a calf, unsure whether he meant to threaten or merely to explore. Madeleine’s leg was rigid beneath his hand, a soft curve of fine cloth and concealed flesh that twitched at his touch. Javert tightened his grip, digging in his fingers, and for a moment Madeleine’s legs threatened to buckle.

Javert sat back on his knees. ‘I can imagine what you might do to this town, given the chance.’ The factory was already a travesty - its gates riddled with the idle fools and drunks who would not even take the honest work that Madeleine handed out as easily as he slipped silver to a savoyard. He already had the town’s good people eating from the palm of his hand. Why not make his position secure?

Madeleine was shaking his head, one hand flung up and his arm covering his eyes. An experimental brush against his thigh drew out a choked sob. It should not have been satisfying, to provoke a gentleman in this manner, with his portress only a few rooms away and his bath readied and cooling untouched. Still, Javert could not help but touch. Deprived of the sight of Madeleine unclothed, he took what Madeleine had not denied him: the half-stifled sounds he made as each thread of control was carefully unpicked.

‘You would be my superior,’ Javert muttered, glancing up. Could Madeleine hear how repulsed he was by the thought? The very idea of being in an imposter’s service? He leaned forward to inhale the scent of Jean Valjean, his dirt and sweat seeping through Madeleine’s ragged clothes. His breathing was uneven. A brush of Javert’s hand across the hot front of his trousers confirmed his state. Not fear, then, but something else entirely. Or, perhaps, fear _and_ something else as well.

 _Very well, then,_ Javert thought, dragging his palm down the sensitive inner part of Madeleine’s thigh. _Let him have both._

‘You are not averse to the thought, I see.’ Let the man squirm beneath his hand, let him twist his voice into whatever sounds he may please. The truth was a harder thing to wriggle free from. Another hot breath against the front of the man’s breeches, and Madeleine’s sobs grew incoherent. Madeleine’s hand came down - again, hovered at his shoulder before dropping to Madeleine’s side without touching. Javert took the fastenings of the breeches in his hand, looked up and waited until he had Madeleine’s attention.

‘If you please, Monsieur le Maire?’ He savoured the foul taste of the title on his lips, furious that this man would make a mockery of his title, of Javert’s service, of the town and its police force. ‘Well?’ he snapped. He twisted his wrist, roughly brushing the head of the hard cock that sought upwards through layers of cloth.

‘Well?’

He drew a harsh groan from Madeleine and would have drunk it in if he could.

‘Come along, come along,’ his tone was impatient. He pressed his forehead against Madeleine’s firm stomach, allowing his lips to brush against the hardness beneath the trousers, feeling the cloth abrasive against his mouth. ‘We’ve wasted enough time. May I?’

Madeleine’s eyes were half closed and his hand was braced on the wall behind him. ‘Javert-’

To hear his own name reduced to a desperate plea on this Madeleine’s lips was a torment and Javert could not help but groan in response. Madeleine’s hand sought forward again for his shoulder, tangled instead in his hair, and for a moment Javert wanted nothing more than for Madeleine to tighten his hand into a fist, to tilt back his head and bare his throat. _Give me an excuse_ , he thought wildly. _At least let me be sure I am not besmirching an innocent man._ ’

‘Javert,’ Madeleine tried again. ‘It would not be right for me to-’

‘Then allow me to bathe you,’ Javert’s words twisted to a snarl behind his teeth. ‘And if you refuse to let yourself be cleaned, then let yourself be rewarded. If you found yourself on your knees before a man in your condition, would you leave him wanting and alone?’ He bared his teeth. ‘Do not lie.’

‘This is different.’

‘It is _not_. It’s obvious what you want. Ask now and I will grant it.’

The hand in his hair tensed but did not tighten, and Javert tasted fear in the back of his throat. Would Madeleine allow him to humiliate himself like this? Surely not. Madeleine would never let a man go to his knees and then leave him there. Madeleine was toying with his hair, his hand heavy and close, the smell of his warm and hard-worked body almost surrounding Javert. Maddening. ‘Say yes,’ he demanded, and only then did the hand in his hair tighten, as though Madeleine had heard his own urgency echoed back in Javert’s rising tone.

_Say yes. Let me have you, whatever you are, until the world tilts again. Treat it as an act of compassion if you must, but for once in your damned life, be obedient. Please._

When he dared to look up, Madeleine’s eyes were fixed on the places where their bodies met.

‘Lord have mercy on me,’ Madeleine breathed. He inclined his head, and Javert fell upon him.

Beneath the shredded trousers, Madeleine was solid and hard and his skin was sweetly smooth to the touch. He gasped at the first brush of Javert’s hand - jerking upwards into the instinctively tightening grip. The course was clear. Javert had learned enough from grunted instructions overheard in the dark corners of Toulon to know what was required of him.

How would they look, Javert wondered, if some old cellmate of Jean le Cric’s could see them at this moment? The guard supplicant and the convict still dressed in abraded silk. That powerful hand in Javert’s hair, resting but tense as though the man were struggling to keep from grasping. Madeleine’s breath was coming in shaky whispers, as though he too could see that the natural order of things had gone awry.

Well, let him know it, Javert thought savagely. Why should only one of them be unsettled? And so thinking, he stretched his mouth around the head of the man’s cock.

Where did Madeleine end and Valjean begin? The clothes were as much of a falsehood as the name. If Javert could not convince the man to bare his scarred back, then perhaps this was another way through Madeleine and into Valjean. He hollowed his cheeks, driving himself clumsily down to take in more. This was a nakedness of its own. How many men had heard Valjean’s breath shudder to pieces as control was plucked from him? How much could he coax Valjean to reveal, vulnerable and exposed as he was? What might cause him pleasure, and how best to find it and inflict it upon him?

Was it improper for a guard to kneel before his convict? For a police inspector to offer his mouth to his prisoner? Of course it was. But this prisoner might soon be elevated to mayor, and that threw the world into disarray.

He did not like to even think the word _confused_ , so he did not. He pressed downwards, taking grim satisfaction in the way those powerful thighs trembled, just as they might tremble beneath a broken cart, a double load, a fallen slave. Let him feel the pressure, then. If lips and tongue and the graze of teeth were a torment now, they would seem a mercy in time.

Above him, Madeleine’s - _Valjean’s_ \- eyes were closed and his jaw clenched, willfully holding back what sounds he could. Javert reached down to flatten his palm against the trembling thighs, pulled back to suck reverent kisses into that hot flesh, imagined Madeleine driven to his knees and exposed in the town square.

There was no question about the man’s true identity - _but there is_ that creeping worry insisted, staying his hand before he dared slip it under the loose hem of the shirt. Instead he toyed with the fraying threads, feeling them fragile as tissue between his fingers. In his mouth, Madeleine was jerking up with shallow, painfully restrained thrusts. Javert tightened his fist around the cloth, thrilling at the sound of the fraying ends coming apart, the rip loud and echoing in the dark hallway.

Had he hoped to lift the cart and walk away unpunished? Javert would not allow it. Madeleine might yet enjoy the crowd's adulation and a brief reprieve, but his crimes and his history were written across his flesh, and the shared knowledge bound them to one another. His mand was racing but could not stray far from that moment in the square. A gesture as good as a confession. Madeleine’s muddied knees and elbows straining under the impossible burden on his shoulders. His back arching as, measure by aching measure, he hefted the wooden carcass aloft. He had groaned aloud, his face contorting with the effort. It was sufficient evidence to seize him then and there.

But it was not. It was not. He was getting away from himself.

And yet now, backed against the wall, that broad chest rose and fell again with each heaving breath, straining the tatters of the shirt. His face was twisted with effort, his hips were locked in place. That strength that could move mountains sublimated into harsh resolve. He did not grab at Javert’s hair or shove up into his throat. But he could just as easily lift Javert to his feet and fling him across the room, and he did not do that either.

Since he could not be relied upon to take the initiative - and since he did not have the right to make the decision - Javert chose for him. He opened wider to take in more, suck more fervently. His hands were iron, clasping Madeleine’s hips, and Madeleine let out a terrible shaking moan.

Yes, this was the moment. The words were slipping out now, aching soft and fragmented on the sinner’s lips. ‘Forgive me,’ Madeleine said. And, ‘never again, I swear, but this is-’ and, unexpectedly, ‘ _Javert_ , please, yes. Yes.’ He was finishing in hot, short spurts, filling Javert’s mouth and leaving him no choice but to swallow. It came in desperate waves, filling up his mouth again. He swallowed convulsively, his hand pressed to the front of his trousers until there was nothing but Jean Valjean's broken sobs above him and Jean Valjean in Madeleine’s ragged costume, and Jean Valjean who had been driven to his knees by Toulon and who would soon kneel before the law again as he should and as was right. Javert was panting, desperate, around the softening cock that slipped free from his mouth. It brushed his lip, leaving a wet trail that he did not wish to wipe away.

A moment’s reprieve. Madeleine slipped free from between Javert and the wall, slid down to crouch beside Javert.

Javert was panting, still hard. Doglike and repulsive. He pressed his forehead against the wall where it was still warm from Madeleine’s back. The hand that had been in his hair slipped down to his shoulder, trailing impossible gentleness. Madeleine was shifting behind him, moving stiffly out of his line of sight, and Javert wondered, dazed, if this was the moment that Valjean would choose to take some terrible revenge. Why should he not, after all? Javert had never intended to reveal himself quite like this.

Instead, the hand pressed gingerly at his arm, stroking with stiff and unpracticed motions but moving inexorably inwards, downwards, to where Javert’s hand rested on his knee. For a moment Madeleine’s hand covered his palm but quickly retreated, inching upwards towards his thigh.

‘Stop.’ Javert’s voice was tight in his throat, and the hand froze but did not pull back. ‘Stop now. There is no need.’

But it was too late. Already he could feel Madeleine’s - _Valjean’s_ \- chest at his back. His lips at Javert’s ear, each word tingling down the back of Javert’s neck. ‘There is a need. Even I-’ a broken laugh. ‘This is not something I've come to expect of life, this- none of this. But even I can tell when I see need.’

Javert straightened his shoulders as best he could. He tilted his chin up, though the gesture must have made him ridiculous given his condition. ‘Monsieur should not trouble himself.’

‘ _Would you leave him alone and wanting?_ ’ And God help them both but the voice in Javert's ear was heavy with conviction and deliberation. ‘Do not ask me to do something that you yourself would not do. Please, Javert.’

He was not sincere, Javert reminded himself. This man had fooled an entire town. He had shaken off the police force. He was not to be trusted. But he was warm and solid at Javert’s back and the arm that still curled around Javert was thick. Under the shirtsleeves it was corded with muscle. On his left shoulder was a silver crescent-shaped scar: a souvenir of the day some south-eastern mongrel had tried to do him in with a smuggled blade. Javert gritted his teeth. ‘You buy yourself no favours here.’

‘I would not ask them of you.’

Of course not. He knew better than that. Javert took a breath. ‘Very well, then.’

He did not mean to relax backwards into the arms that surrounded him. He did not turn to look, though he wanted nothing more than to watch. It would not do let the imposter see his expression. Instead he fixed his eyes on the wall before them as that hand came down to palm against his crotch.

And now - now he saw the true power of Valjean’s restraint, because the touch was enough to make him groan and push upwards into that hand. With a little less self-control, he might have squirmed upwards to encourage more touch, more friction. Instead he waited, teetering as though on the sharpest point of a blade, until he was secure in the palm of Valjean’s hand.

It would not take long, he thought distantly. They had circled one another too long - Javert had been in pursuit for longer than he had realised. Those late nights spent turning over dusty memories of Toulon, searching for Madeleine’s form among a sea of faceless men. The files he had sent for that had not supplied enough detail; the reliance on hindsight and half-recalled rumours of escapes and re-arrests. It was his duty to investigate his suspicions, of course. But was it his duty to picture the broad chest beneath those clothes? To imagine locking a hand on a bare shoulder and roughly examining the planes of muscle?

He shoved upwards, savouring the grip and helpless at the blinding warmth of the touch. The hand was not tight enough. Not certain enough to hold him fast. But it was large and calloused and more tanned than the hand of a gentleman. The wrist was still covered by the damp sleeves, but it was broad and supple, and all Javert needed was the sight of that hand and arm to press himself against. If this was the evidence that would damn Valjean, it would all be waiting for another time. Valjean could dress himself as he liked and choose his name, but his skin would always be his own and its secrets would be revealed in time.

He hissed at that thought, thrusting a final time into the waiting hand.

His blood pounded in his ears, loudly enough that at first he did not hear his harsh breaths. His issue was splattered across Madeleine’s broad hand and sleeve. Some had sprayed onto the wall. He groaned at the sight, unease rising again within him. More so when Madeleine silently pressed a hand to his back and withdrew. A shuffling sound at his back told him that Madeleine had risen to his feet, and Javert leaned forward again, swallowing long breaths.

By the time Javert had collected himself, stood and turned around, Madeleine was buttoned and upright, wiping his hand on a handkerchief. The sight was enough to make Javert’s stomach pang, as though he had somehow been deprived of his due.

In the clearing light of his slowing heartbeat, some of the certainty was fading. The line between Madeleine’s eyebrows that could only have been Jean Valjean’s seemed less clear cut. The curve of his shoulders could surely have been any man’s. Javert found that his hands were shaking. He balled them into fists to steady them. Madeleine’s eyes met his, clear and icily polite. He smiled the quiet smile that Javert had seem him grant to chattering salesmen and business associates, and Javert gritted his teeth.

‘Thank you again for your assistance today, Javert. Is there anything else I can do for you?’

So well-mannered, this factory owner. This man who fed undeserving children and lifted heavy oak on his back and who cried out Javert’s name when he came. So good-natured and polite, this fraud. Javert’s whole body was a single clenched line. He performed a stiff bow.

‘Only that monsieur enjoys his bath and then retires.’

A flicker of Madeleine’s eyelid was the only suggestion that he would do anything but that. He inclined his head, then crossed the room to hold the door for Javert. Javert followed, for once feeling the sting of Madeleine’s eyes tracking him until he reached the doorway. There, Madeleine glanced downwards, took a deep breath, and looked back at Javert.

‘I think you are wrong,’ he said. ‘About my future in this town, that is. Or, at least, I hope you are wrong. But if you are right and my fortune changes, I hope-’ and here his voice was almost pained. ‘I hope I will be able to rely on you. You seem to be an honourable man.’

Javert swallowed hard, tamping down anger and, worse, an instinctive jolt of shameful pride. He grimaced. ‘Rest assured, Monsieur,’ he said, stepping out of the doorway. ‘Whatever becomes of you, I will be sure to do my duty.’

**Author's Note:**

> Written for vaincs for Les Jours D'été, for this prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Javert/Valjean: Either Valjean or Javert on their knees for the other. Give me the literal, the metaphorical, and/or the sexual._
> 
>  
> 
> There was no mention of Madeleine-era in your request, so I hope this setting is okay. I've also tried to include some details from your pornathon request. Sorry for the lack of nipples. Maybe one day Valjean will want to take his shirt off in front of Javert.


End file.
